Dichotomy and Status: Leeds University Librarianship to 1934

Abstract An academic library without an able librarian can readily sink into confusion, and a disorderly library helps nobody. It is particularly opportune to examine the librarianship of one of those English universities whose origin lay in the 1870s because accounts of these institutions, mostly published in official celebration of a centenary, normally refer proudly to their library buildings and book-stocks but tend to pay less attention to their librarianships. Of course, no claim can be made of any one university that it typifies all, yet despite some arbitrariness here in the choice of Leeds for examination, development of its librarianship nevertheless illuminates general points. The formative years of the librarianship at the University of Leeds extend up to 1934 when Senate admitted the librarian to its membership. Not only did that event mark an important constitutional change in relations between library and governing body, but also recognised the importance of a librarianship. The previous sixty years reveal tensions and arguments over the appropriate management of a university library, and over the role and status of its librarian. Primary sources for a study of this period are numerous though occasionally laconic, and include official papers and minutes, now preserved by the University of Leeds either in its Archives or its Brotherton Library. Various letters and diaries shed additional light, even waspish comment, as does a published essay on university librarianship by one of the protagonists. ‘